Dream sequence? Bright white light? Slow-motion flashback? Fade to black? Television hasn’t yet exhausted the options in depicting all manner of death and dying.

In the case of “The Big C,” any of those might work.

We’ve wondered about this since we first heard the title: “The Big C” is not a literal happy-ending kind of show.

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In fact, followers know it’s not a literal show at all. Visions, angels and dead neighbors are as likely to pop up in the cancer comedy as are doctors and chemo. Cathy Jamison ( Laura Linney) deserves a fitting ending, if not a happy one.

This spring we get a proper ending, not the loosely metaphorical sailing off into the sunset that the end of season 3 offered.

The subject of death, always overshadowing and adding pathos to the comedy of the series, is in the forefront when the cancer comedy returns for a big finish.

Beginning at 8 p.m. Monday and running for four weeks, Showtime’s “The Big C: Hereafter” switches to an hour-long format for its final installments, playing out more like a contained miniseries than the preceding half-hour episodes. For viewers accustomed to laughing through tears at the tough-talking Cathy, there is a bit less laughter.

Cathy is insistently focused on the timing, the feel, the place and the manner of her impending demise, to the extent that surrounding characters begin to protest.

But she is fascinated by the experience, amazed at her own decline and full of questions. She’s worried about those she will leave behind, determined to control what she can — and obsessed enough to try to control even those things she cannot.

“You know, I’ve never really died before,” she says. “So maybe I just need to play the whole thing out.”

Through lingering, dark humor and through more quiet, serious moments, the moral continues to be the importance of actually living.

Linney, Emmy-nominated for the role, continues to carry the show but with help from notable guest stars. Alan Alda as Cathy’s physician, Brian Dennehy as her father and Kathy Najimy as her therapist are well cast; the presence of Isaac Mizrahi is a bit of a stunt as Gabby’s (Gabourey Sidibe) fashion teacher.

Television depicts death constantly, in news as well as fictional programming, but rarely have entire series been built on the human process of raging against and coming to terms with mortality. “Six Feet Under” used a wide lens to explore all kinds of deaths, the mortuary business and the effects of a patriarch’s death on a family. “The Big C” has been more narrowly interested in cancer, one woman’s relationship with the disease, the effects on the family and what death can teach about life.

Chronicling Cathy’s journey, executive producers Darlene Hunt and Jenny Bicks (a cancer survivor) have so far taken her from denial to rage to bargaining and depression. Onward to acceptance, and to a satisfying conclusion.